The Mixer: The Story of Premier League Tactics, from Route One to False Nines

by Michael Cox

  Klopp generally overlooked traditional strikers and deployed Firmino, an attacking midfielder, as his most advanced attacker. While this was in keeping with the increased emphasis on forwards linking play, it was primarily because the energetic Brazilian was excellent at starting Liverpool’s press. In Klopp’s system, Firmino’s job was to ‘split’ the pitch in half, forcing the opposition to play the ball towards either full-back, then to pressure the passing lane between that full-back and the nearest centre-back, while his teammates would push up and get tight to other nearby passing options. Much like Pochettino’s Southampton, Liverpool performed better against big sides because they depended upon teams passing out from the back for their press to be activated and their game plan to work. In that sense Liverpool returned to their problems of the Rafael Benítez years, when they consistently won big games but struggled against smaller teams.

  The impact of these pressing-focused managers was significant – after a few years of calm, thoughtful matches in the possession era, now teams were fierce, frantic units obsessed with breaking up play and covering plenty of ground. No Premier League team combined top-class possession play with top-class pressing, and therefore none came close to the level of Guardiola’s Barcelona. Much of the pressing was taken for granted, but the tendency for teams to push up and prevent the opposition taking goal-kicks short, for example, is a relatively new development. Of course, a decade beforehand goalkeepers simply thumped the ball downfield, meaning any pressing would have been pointless – so this is a neat microcosm of how pressing arose as a direct response to possession.

  ‘There’s a lot of high-intensity, really quick pressing,’ said Swansea’s Leon Britton, who had epitomised the possession era but found himself less valued in the pressing era. ‘The new generation of manager is producing training sessions to reflect that game; they are pressing quicker, getting players to recover quicker. It’s an 11-man game now.’

  That summarises the expansion of the Premier League’s defensive units. Most of the Premier League’s greatest attacking talents, from Eric Cantona to Cristiano Ronaldo, had thrived when freed from defensive responsibilities. With the rise of pressing, however, the free role was a thing of the past.

  24

  Leicester

  ‘In an era when money counts for everything, I think we give hope to everybody.’

  Claudio Ranieri

  There is simply no precedent for Leicester City’s astonishing title triumph in 2015/16. No achievement in sporting history has ever been so improbable; nothing comes close to matching the pre-season odds of 5000/1, which became a major discussion point as Claudio Ranieri’s side edged closer to the title. Previously, all 23 Premier League title-winning sides had one of the five highest wage bills in the division. Leicester’s, however, was among the bottom five.

  Despite being widely considered a relegation candidate, Leicester started encouragingly, stayed within touching distance of the leaders for longer than anyone expected – and then, with the usual suspects enduring awful campaigns and other challengers gradually dropping away, simply kept on going. Theirs was a truly wonderful underdog victory, the type that simply didn’t appear possible considering the huge financial inequalities in the Premier League – Leicester’s wage bill was around one-quarter of Chelsea’s. Opposition players, rival managers and fans across the country united in support of Ranieri’s side, willing them over the finishing line. In Premier League terms it was a unique event unlikely to be repeated.

  There was, however, a template for Ranieri and Leicester City. English football had increasingly been influenced by successful European sides, as the sudden obsessions with Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona and Jürgen Klopp’s Dortmund demonstrated. For a true underdog victory, meanwhile, there was the tale of Atlético Madrid’s improbable 2013/14 La Liga success. This was previously considered the biggest upset of modern football times, as Diego Simeone’s team ended Barcelona and Real Madrid’s decade-long duopoly by clinching the title at Camp Nou – serenaded by Barça supporters who couldn’t help but admire them. This wasn’t quite a Leicester tale – Atlético were 100/1 rather than 5000/1 – but like the Premier League, La Liga had previously been dominated by an even more untouchable, even more exclusive elite. Atlético smashed that ceiling, and pointed the way for others to upset the traditional big boys.

  Simeone’s Atlético overachieved through a combination of superb organisation, terrifying intensity and lightning-quick transitions. Pre-match teamsheets depicted Atlético in a simple, old-school 4–4–2 system, although the reality was more sophisticated; the two forwards, Diego Costa and David Villa, played extraordinarily deep when Atlético didn’t have possession, almost as supplementary midfielders. This allowed the midfield quartet to sit back and protect the defence keenly, keeping Atlético incredibly compact and difficult to play through. They shepherded the opposition into wide areas, then pressed intensely, forcing turnovers and countering ruthlessly. More than anything, Atlético were defined by their lack of interest in possession, averaging less than 50 per cent throughout their title campaign, which came as a serious shock in Spain, a nation that had dominated world football with tiki-taka. Statistically, Atlético led the way in terms of tackling, an attribute Spain midfielder Xabi Alonso had rubbished as ‘a last resort … it isn’t a quality to aspire to.’ La Liga’s widespread emphasis upon possession played into the hands of the alternative: counter-attacking Atlético.

  By the time Leicester became title favourites in the spring of 2016, the similarity with Atlético was obvious: a compact 4–4–2, deep defending, feisty tacklers in central midfield, brilliant counter-attacking and the maximising of set-piece opportunities. Their share of possession was the third-lowest in the division with only West Brom and Sunderland – managed by Tony Pulis and Sam Allardyce respectively, the Premier League’s most notorious route one merchants – seeing less of the ball. However, like Atlético in 2013/14, Leicester recorded the highest number of tackles in the division and the highest number of interceptions. The fascinating story behind Leicester’s fairy-tale season is their gradual evolution into that type of side.

  In the previous season, 2014/15, Leicester were playing in the Premier League for the first time in over a decade. It initially appeared a fleeting return, as the Foxes were in the relegation zone for over half the campaign and bottom for 17 consecutive matches. But a late-season surge, in part because manager Nigel Pearson switched to a three-man defence, proved crucial. Having won just four of their first 29 matches, Leicester won seven of their last nine, with that winning streak only broken by a defeat to eventual champions Chelsea, and a goalless draw at Sunderland when Leicester knew a point would seal survival.

  Pearson, having achieved this hugely improbable great escape, was surprisingly sacked in the summer. A local newspaper poll found that 70 per cent of supporters disagreed with the decision. Pearson’s conduct in press conferences and in interactions with supporters had occasionally been entirely unprofessional, while his son, a reserve team player, was sacked having been filmed using racist language while on a post-season trip to Thailand – particularly embarrassing given that Leicester were owned by Thai billionaire Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha. Leicester then stunned the footballing world by appointing Ranieri. He’d most recently been seen spectacularly failing with the Greek national side, who suffered an embarrassing defeat to the Faroe Islands. At Leicester he lasted only 20 months, and was dismissed with the club hovering just above the relegation zone. In that period, though, he recorded the most sensational title victory in English football history.

  ‘They were strong, very fighting,’ Ranieri said of Leicester’s 2014/15 campaign, at his first Leicester press conference, ‘but I think they need a little more tactics.’ Throughout his stint at Chelsea Ranieri was nicknamed ‘the Tinkerman’ for his tendency to rotate, change formation and make surprise substitutions. But upon arrival at Leicester he was noticeably keen not to reinvent the wheel. At Chelsea Ranieri discovered t
hat there were members of his own backroom staff who were extremely unpopular with the players, so with Leicester he retained the services of Pearson’s highly rated and popular assistants Steve Walsh and Craig Shakespeare.

  Ranieri spent the pre-season trip to Austria observing training sessions rather than interfering. ‘I’m sure I don’t want to change too many things – I’m going to change very slowly, so that everyone understands me,’ he announced. Notably, throughout Leicester’s pre-season friendlies he always started with Pearson’s formation, although he routinely switched to a four-man defence. ‘I’d start with a back three and switch to a back four at half-time,’ he explained. ‘And it was really simple – we just played better with a four.’ For Leicester’s first league game – against Sunderland – he therefore settled on a four-man defence but named only one new signing, energetic Japanese striker Shinji Okazaki, in his starting XI. Other recruits, such as midfield destroyer N’Golo Kanté and left-back Christian Fuchs, needed to be patient. While Ranieri would eventually name the same starting XI almost every week, at the start of the campaign only seven of those players were in his side.

  Initially, Leicester were nothing like the solid, defensive-minded outfit that would later grind out narrow victories during the run-in. In fact, their journey was the opposite of Liverpool’s in 2013/14, who started off winning matches 1–0, then became involved in countless goalfests – Leicester started the season with end-to-end thrillers, then learned how to win in a controlled manner, eventually becoming renowned as a superb counter-attacking outfit. This approach was impossible in the opening weeks, because it depends upon the opposition coming onto you. Leicester, however, frequently conceded the first goal and were therefore forced to dominate matches in search of a comeback. In four of their opening six matches the Foxes went 1–0 behind, meaning the opposition sat deeper and denied Ranieri’s side space to break into. They proved excellent at clawing themselves back into games, and somewhat surprisingly maintained the league’s longest unbeaten run. After five matches they were in second place.

  But Ranieri wasn’t happy, and he realised that a significant defensive improvement was required simply to keep Leicester in the Premier League. Ahead of the sixth game of the season, away at Stoke, Ranieri announced he’d bribed his players to underline the importance of shutting out the opposition. ‘When we make a clean sheet, I will buy everybody a pizza!’ he declared. ‘I want to buy pizza, but my players don’t want pizza – maybe they don’t love pizza?’ The problem, however, was more about Leicester’s tactical approach than the players’ culinary preferences; they were extremely open, and their defence was constantly penetrated by through-balls between centre-back and full-back. They didn’t keep a clean sheet at Stoke – indeed, captain Wes Morgan’s wayward back-pass for Jon Walters’ goal was the worst defensive mistake of Leicester’s campaign – and the Potters were 2–0 up at the break. But when Ranieri reshaped at half-time, he stumbled upon the midfield quartet that would take Leicester to the title. Crucially, this featured Kanté deployed as a central midfielder for the first time, the combative Frenchman being one of three key players who would define Leicester’s campaign.

  Kanté, signed from Caen that summer, wasn’t actually the main target identified by Leicester’s recruitment department. Their first-choice was Jordan Veretout, and they were disappointed when the playmaker chose to join Aston Villa – which, considering Villa finished bottom, proved an unimaginably awful decision. Kanté was a different type of player, who had impressed Leicester’s analytics team with his ball-recovery statistics, winning more tackles than any other Ligue 1 player. Initially, he and fellow newcomer Gökhan İnler, a more exciting purchase because he boasted Champions League experience and captained Switzerland, were omitted, with the previous season’s combination of Danny Drinkwater and Andy King preferred. When handed opportunities İnler was hugely disappointing and struggled with the pace of the Premier League, but Kanté played at a higher tempo than anyone, buzzing around the pitch and constantly dispossessing opponents. Indeed, he was so energetic that Ranieri was initially reluctant to deploy him as a defensive midfielder, feeling he required players who offered more positional discipline. As a result Kanté’s initial opportunities came either on the left, or in Okazaki’s position between midfield and Vardy – the Frenchman was the only player who could match Okazaki’s incredible work rate.

  Despite being fielded in relatively attacking roles, Kanté’s ball-winning statistics proved impossible to ignore. From his advanced midfield position he won ten tackles against Bournemouth, six more than anyone else on the pitch, and from the left against Stoke he made the most ball recoveries. He was evidently an outstanding ball-winner, and Ranieri gradually realised that he should be anchoring Leicester’s midfield. At half-time against Stoke he removed the cumbersome İnler and introduced Marc Albrighton, who had been harshly dropped, having recorded three assists in five games. Kanté shifted inside into his preferred central role, and Leicester improved dramatically – more ball-winning potential in the middle, more crossing threat from Albrighton. They produced yet another second-half comeback, drawing 2–2, and Kanté would never be moved from that central role. He evoked memories of former Chelsea defensive midfielder Claude Makélélé, making both the most tackles and the most interceptions of any player in the Premier League that season.

  ‘We play three in midfield,’ joked assistant Steve Walsh. ‘We play Danny Drinkwater in the middle and Kanté either side.’ It was a pertinent joke, although it’s worth considering that Leicester’s true third central midfielder was actually Okazaki, who dropped into extremely deep positions and shut down the opposition’s holding midfielder quickly. He was a striker by nature – but five goals and no assists underlines the fact he offered little threat in the penalty box. Instead, he was more useful for starting the defensive pressure.

  Kanté’s central positioning was only the first step in Leicester’s evolution, and it didn’t reap instant rewards. The title-winning midfield quartet of Mahrez, Drinkwater, Kanté and Albrighton started together for the first time the following weekend, but Leicester’s unbeaten record was ended with a 5–2 thrashing at the hands of Arsenal, whose quick attackers Alexis Sánchez and Theo Walcott found plenty of space in the channels, the Chilean grabbing a hat-trick. At this point Leicester were a thrilling all-out-attack side; they’d jointly scored the most goals in the Premier League alongside West Ham, but only Sunderland had conceded more. They dropped to eighth position, surely regressing towards their rightful place, and Ranieri still hadn’t bought pizza. His centre-backs, Morgan and Robert Huth, lacked mobility and were forced to cover a huge amount of space with their teammates bombing forward regularly. Reverting to the previous season’s three-man defence seemed an obvious tactical switch, but Ranieri persisted with the back four and concentrated upon minimising space in the channels. Ahead of the next game, against Norwich, he made a significant decision.

  In the opening weeks Ranieri’s left-back was Jeffrey Schlupp, a flying wing-back in Pearson’s system, whose frequent powerful runs had earned him Leicester’s Players’ Player of the Year award. But his attack-minded mentality didn’t work at left-back, and Ranieri knew his forward running was exposing the centre-backs. Instead, he fielded Fuchs, who lacked Schlupp’s attacking dynamism but was six foot one, solid, and could tuck inside to protect Morgan and Huth. On the opposite flank, Ritchie De Laet had made too many defensive mistakes, so Danny Simpson replaced him and played more conservatively. They were given specific instructions: you can only overlap when Leicester are losing.

  The change was dramatic. Leicester dropped deeper, played narrower and conceded space on the outside of, rather than between, the four defenders. The strong duo of Morgan and Huth were happier remaining on the edge of their own box and heading away crosses rather than playing higher up and chasing quicker opponents into the channels. ‘Jeff and Ritchie going forward are lightning,’ explained goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel. ‘But it lef
t huge, huge spaces to be exposed in behind … we needed to change something. Now we have four defenders in there.’

  It’s a cliché to insist Italian managers love defensive football, but Ranieri continually emphasised his ‘Italian tactics’, and he deliberately took a further step backwards to concentrate on keeping a clean sheet. Astonishingly, he dropped Mahrez, the right-winger who had recorded five goals and three assists in his first seven games, and would eventually be voted PFA Player of the Year. For two games, with Ranieri so determined to improve Leicester’s defensive structure, Mahrez was omitted. Not injured, not rested, not rotated, simply excluded from the starting XI for tactical reasons. Schlupp played on the left of midfield, Albrighton started on the right. The clean sheet still didn’t come, but Leicester looked better defensively against Norwich and Southampton.

  Then, ten matches into the campaign, they bagged their first clean sheet, against Crystal Palace. Ranieri recalled Mahrez, but not in a position where he had defensive responsibility, instead using the Algerian behind Vardy – the two combined for the only goal of the game. ‘It was more of an Italian match than an English one,’ grinned Ranieri. That Italian match was celebrated, of course, with pizza, although Ranieri didn’t simply buy dinner. He took the entire squad to Peter Pizzeria in the centre of Leicester, where the players had to make their own pizzas. This served as a great team-bonding exercise and a tremendous PR stunt, a new spin on Premier League footballers with loads of dough.